What are they?
flash mob
Recap
In my last post I spoke about Improv Everywhere and to what extent it fit this ideal of mass, anyone, anywhere participation. At the end of that post, I came to the conclusion that ultimately, these flash mob groups that make claims of mass, anybody, participation are inherently closed.
“we cause scenes”, we are a closed community: Improv Everywhere
Quick Recap:
In my last post I wrote about my mixed experience with Critical Mass. To summarize, I went to one of their gatherings, spoke with a few people and wrote about my experience riding with them accidentally last summer. They present themselves as a leaderless organization that promotes bike rider rights and the reduction of greenhouse gases. I found that many of the participants were unaware of the real reason behind the madness (the madness of mass cyclists in the streets)
This Past Week:
Now I turn to Improv Everywhere. Their catchphrase is “we cause scenes”. It was founded by Charlie Todd, a teacher at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, comedian and New Yorker. At a glance, Improv Everywhere seems to be a group that is open to input from the public (for new prank ideas) and encourages scenes of “chaos and joy”. However, under closer examination, Improv Everywhere is rather closed off from the public with a hierarchical structure with Todd as the God.
flash mobs
For my next log, I decided to pull back a little and look at different kinds of flash mobs, rather than just ImprovEverywhere. I found a variety of different kinds that range from strange to very serious. One site, flashmob.com is an open forum where anyone can post a flash mob event that people can attend. However, judging from the types of events that are posted, I cannot imagine that the turn out to the events posted here is very high. However, I am going to investigate further and see if this is actually an effective way to get a mob going. It seems that flash mobs are more successful when they are organized in a way that people feel that they are part of a community. Flashmob.com features an anonymous, unstructured way of mobbing. ImprovEverywhere provides a community and a certain degree of fame (they list the “agents” used in each event).
Another group, critical mass seems to be a mix of flashmob.com and ImprovEverywhere. Critical Mass meets on the last Friday of every month to promote bicycle riding and to protest the huge amount of cars that people drive in urban areas. There is a specific goal and purpose yet there are no specific people mentioned. ImprovEverywhere is much more open about publicizing the people involved. If I find the time, maybe I will participate in critical mass or post an event on flashmob.com and see what the turn out is..
Another way flash mobs are used are for purely pranking purposes as featured below on a silly japanese tv show
Improv Everywhere
Rather than explore the Wii, guitar hero and other forms of interactive games (which has been touched upon by a few other people), I have decided to focus on a website called Improv Everywhere which is a community/blog based in New York City where Improv Everywhere’s missions are posted. Some of you may have already hear about it (theyre the people who did the “freezing at grand central” scene). What is interesting about it is that it is a real group of people who go out in the real world and execute pranks or “cause scenes”. Videos, accounts and stories about them are then posted online for others to see. This creates a strange environment where we, as outsiders, know what the prank is but the outsiders involved in the video do not. It is a lot like understanding an inside joke without actually having to be on the inside.
